Hackaday Links: January 5, 2012

Now make it life size

Here’s a scale model of the classic Playstation game Wipeout.It uses quantum levitation, superconductors, liquid nitrogen, and incredibly detailed models of the cars in Wipeout. They’re able control the speed and direction of the cars electronically. Somebody get on making one of these I can drive. Never mind, it’s totally fake, but here’s a choo-choo that does the same thing. Thanks for the link, [Ben].

Found a use for eight copies of Deep Impact

Where do you keep all your wire? [Paul] keeps his inside VHS tapes. It’s one of the most efficient ways of storing wire we’ve seen, just don’t touch those VHS copies of the original Star Wars trilogy.

There’s MAME machines for pinball?

MAME arcade machines are old hat, but we’ve never seen something to emulate pinball. The build uses two LCD monitors, a small computer and PinMAME. There’s videos in the build log; tell us if we’re stupid for wanting to build one. Thanks go to [Adrian] for sending this one in.

LEGO binary to decimal conversion

[Carl] is doing a few experiments to see if it’s possible to build a calculating machine out of LEGO. He managed to convert four bits of binary into decimal. We’ve seen a LEGO Antikythera mechanism but nothing on the order of an Analytical Engine or some Diamond Age rod logic. Keep it up, [Carl].

Lubs and Dubs that aren’t for dubstep

The folks at Toymaker Television posted a neat demo of heart rhythms emulated with a microprocessor. It cycles through normal sinus rhythm, atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, and everything else that can go wrong with your heart. We know some nurses that would have loved this in school.

Thank you for sharing this. I had been looking for a way to explain quantum levitation to people in plain language enough that they don’t immediately get glazed over. This video is a great example of that.

Videotape wire dispensers, simple, elegant recycling, if I didn’t buy wire in spools of 100m I’d certainly be re-purposing some old tapes.

That wipeout video looks quite cool even with it being fake, it does make me wonder if it’s possible to do for real with a cushion of air, like the classic air hockey game. But I suspect it may be too difficult to pull off as the wipeout track is curved but the air hockey game only works well because it’s a flat surface.

Shall I start with the fact that they’re ‘filling’ the cars with ‘liquid nitrogen’ using a device meant for filling airsoft grenades with CO2, and that last I checked liquid nitrogen doesn’t come in single-use 12 gram powerlets?

There’s also the fact that the vapor trails PASS THROUGH the track at several points in the video. (The idea that they have enough lighting for the track to produce those soft diffused shadows is also suspect.)

It’s some nice video though, they put a bit of effort into it. But while the underlying levitation physics are real, what they are demonstrating is not.

yeah after Techartisan replied to me I went and looked closer and saw that it was a viral marketing ad. As for the liquid N2O this is supposed to be a Japanese R&D lab who knows what they might have hacked together they are supposed to have built a quantum levitating wipe out track after all.